From Information Agent to Social Agents: In Memory of Herbert Simon

An information agent is an information processing system that has cognitive capacities to deal with complex environments, whether it is a human being, an animal, a computer or a robot. Social agents are information agents that have social capabilities to deal with complicated societies, whether they are humans, animals, computers or robots. This invited talk contrasts the structure and functions of traditional information agents with those of social agents, referring to the recent advancement of research on Social Brain Hypothesis and related fields in cognitive science. It stresses the importance of encoding into agents social knowledge, i.e., sets of procedures to promptly recognize and process social information, for future agent technologies. Also the talk includes how Herbert Simon and his colleagues were devoted to analyze, model and design intelligent agents, based on their work on ´information processing psychology´, later to be called cognitive science. Furthermore, the talk gives how Simon´s thought were related to the design of social agents, referring to his earlier work on the decomposable and hierarchical structures of organizations, and organizational decision making procedures.